Jumbo Coin Casting/Soule Steam Festival/Ursutz Burner/Bound Sand Molds

I was at a Steam Engine show last year (Soule), and there is a guy who has attended for several years, and he casts jumbo coins in aluminum, using water-based sand, and does a fantastic job with it, using nothing more than a tin can crucible (I don't recommend using one of those), and a propane utility torch.

I decided that I wanted to try my hand at that, and cast one in Zamak 27, using sodium silicate bound fine sand.
My coin casting did not turn out well, but I will try again one day and see if I can make some decent castings.

The jumbo coin patterns can be purchased online.
Here are the ones I bought.

In the first photo, the impression is "Ah, just another set of coins".
The second photo shows the scale of these things, and my hand is not small.

 

Here is the Zamak 27 attempt at casting the wheat penny.
It was a simple open-faced pourt.

Not a good result, so I need to work on sand.

I may try petrobond. I have some of that from way back when I started casting.

The quarter in the second photo gives an idea of the scale.

 

Here is a link to the Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum, which hosts the "Soule Live Steam Festival" every year.
http://www.soulelivesteam.com/

The Festival is coming up soon.
This year it will be November 3rd and 4th, Friday and Saturday, in Meridian Mississippi (about 3 weeks away).
I plan on being there with an model steam engine display, as well as a casting display.

Soule is a really cool place because the Museum is the original factory that produced steam engines up until perhaps the 1950's, and the original foundry is still in place, along with thousands of patterns, the pattern shop, and the original line-shaft driven machine shop, with a blacksmith area.
There are still parts on the assembly tables from where they assembled the Speedy Twin steam engines.

They host a great iron pour Saturday afternoon. I will dig out some photos from last year.

 

Here is the guy at Soule who casts the jumbo coins.
He goes a great job with them, and I assumed mine would turn out like his, but that is the mystery and intrigue of casting (that things don't always turn out exactly like you suspect).

As I recall, he uses a two-piece mold, which I am sure gives him a little more pressure inside the mold with those risers.
His motto is "You don't need a complex setup to produce some nice castings".
I would add that you do need some decent sand though, and some clean aluminum 356.

 

They have a Maker's Faire at Soule about mid-year every year, and I brought my partially finished green twin oscillator, along with my "trail of tears" collection of mis-castings for that engine, and a few patterns.

This was my table.
The engine is a 1/2 scale model of an engine from England from the late 1800's.
The original is shown on the right in the photo on the table, and my 3D model is shown to the left of that photo (also my avitar).

 

They have a multitude of match plates, patterns, you name it.

 

Match plates for the Speedy Twin steam engine.

 

The original cupola furnace, and the later more modern induction furnace.

 

Steam engines out the wazzoo, most running on live steam.

 

Steam powered gensets (I would really like to have one of these, or two, or ten).

 

The famous Speedy Twin that was cast, machined and assembled at the Soule factory.

This engine was very advanced for its time, and I still consider it advanced even in this day and age.
It is a twin-cylinder engine, 5" bores, quick reversing, very compact, used as a sawmill carriage engine in the lumber industry.
The steam passages in this engine are incredibly complex.

The original patent was filed in 1923 by George W. Soule (pronounced sue-lay).








Here are videos of one in operation:

 

Welp, there goes the entire forums band width for photo storage. LOL

I don't know what it is, whether it be the ingenuity of yester years machinery design or the fact that it'll last hundreds of years or whatever but I get a willy every time I see this stuff.

The STUFF I could build with those HUGE gears.
Might take me forever but that would be fun building some MASSIVE piece of working machinery from scratch.

 

The photos are just 100k or so each, so no problem with space.
I always resize everything to around 100k. The original photos are 2-5 mb each.

Although the old steam engines were not very efficient, they did work very well, and indeed many of them are still operating at the show, being perhaps 100 years old.
The wear surfaces on those things were enormous, using babbitt bearings generally, and they were built to last a very long time.

Imagine having a modern device that still produced full power when 100 years old.

My guess is that they machined the gears to a final size on a jig, either by using a cutter or grinder, since the size of the castings could vary with shrinkage and such.
It looks like the casting could be close enough to work without machining, but for longevity you would want a perfect mesh and thus would want to machine them to exact size.

Here are a few photos of their machine shop.
All the line shafts still work and are all in motion during the show.
I think all the equipment is still functional too, and they coop with a local technical school and actually use all that stuff.

 

Soule is a heck of a place because everything is essentially intact and is still the way it was when they were in production.

You can go up to the pattern shop and find the patterns for the steam engines that they produced, still sitting on the shelf, and parts for the engines still laying on the assembly tables upstairs.
Is is like everyone just walked out one day and they closed the doors, but did not change anything (which apparently is about what happened, and it all got converted to a museum).

They even have all the old office equipment, the Edison dictaphone, etc.
Its a fascinating time capsule of pattern shop, foundry, machine shop and assembly area, all intact.

The patterns are all made from what is considered today to be exotic hardwoods.

 

It all happens next month.
Be there or be square, as they say.

The Festival is coming up soon.
This year it will be November 3rd and 4th, Friday and Saturday, in Meridian Mississippi (about 3 weeks away).

 

Some of the stuff I brought to the show last year.
Friday is school day, so I try to transfer what knowledge I can to the next generation.

I put signs on the table that say "TOUCH THESE ENGINES".
How else would you learn anything about steam engines unless you can touch them and rotate the flywheels.

 

Here is the iron pour that is held on Saturday afternoon, by the "Alabama Art Casting" group.
They pour open-faced scratch-block molds that people custom-carve.

It always fascinates me to watch these iron pours.
This is how it was done in the day.

 

And a backyard casting guy that you may recognize, melting and pouring iron as routinely as if it were aluminum.

I hate it when people make iron casting look easy.